


Inmates (An Interior Weaknesses Vignette)

by Viridian5



Series: Weaknesses [9]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Drama, Episode Related, M/M, Psychic Abilities, Telepathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1999-07-18
Updated: 1999-07-18
Packaged: 2017-10-02 08:13:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Viridian5/pseuds/Viridian5
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the rubber room, Mulder's selves do damage control and make plans.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Inmates (An Interior Weaknesses Vignette)

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for "The End" and "Biogenesis," and a tiny one for "Fire." Fox-Michael works with "When I Grow Up" by Garbage and "Battleflag" by Lo Fidelity Allstars in the background.
> 
> The Weaknesses series would be really helpful. The ["To Have, To Own, To Hold" series](http://archiveofourown.org/series/290) would provide background on the evolution in Fox/Fox-Michael's personality, but it isn't as important.
> 
> Beta by Orithain.

_"You can't escape_  
_What makes you tragic, you know..."_  
   -- "Platinum" by Orgy  
\------------------------------------------------

It seemed that a padded room was our destiny. It did as much good as it had ever done. None.

At least it got us out of Diana's hands. Fox-Michael said he'd rather cut our cock off than have her ever touch us like that again; he had always hated her for taking advantage of him worst of all. Not that she hadn't fucked with each of us in a unique way, even if she hadn't understood what was really going on. He desperately wanted to let Alex know what she'd done this time; after all, Alex had called her in to get Mulder out of the stairwell.

We wondered if Krycek would kill her for it. Whether he did or not would tell us a hell of a lot about her importance to the remnants of the Consortium or the rebels or whomever else they were working for. Left to himself, he'd kill her in a second for it.

Whatever mindfuck had been done to us, it didn't seem to hurt as much when we were all running, online. In other words, if we were sane, we would be far worse off right now. I would laugh if our observers wouldn't take it the wrong way.

I sat back and listened to the others. I proudly watched inmate teamwork in action. Fox-Michael listened to the chaos of distorted voices and separated them into different people. He saw it as untangling a snarled mess of many different colored yarn strands. At this point it was still too early to determine the range of our telepathy--if that's what it really was--but he planned to devote his attention to finding out as soon as he had the tangle sorted out.

He sang to himself as he worked, which would have been a distraction to almost anyone else but seemed to help his concentration. I heard, "When I grow up, I'll be stable / When I grow up, I'll turn the tables..." Kid had a cute sense of humor. He also had a note-perfect memory of the song playing for him. We all used our eidetic memory in different ways.

I hated to admit it, but he was a godsend here. Our soundman. The loud, distorted noises that made the rest of us want to gouge out our eardrums--for all the good that would do against a psychic cacophony--just made him irritably exclaim that he'd heard worse on the stage from mic feedback. He'd just wished for some knobs to adjust and a microphone stand to move.

I wish we had some idea how Gibson Praise had perceived the thoughts he read. Did it sound like this to him too? If it did, did having the talent since birth make it easier to take? He didn't seem to need institutionalization.

Fox-Michael had run the body for a while but had to stop. Singing and headbopping looked normal in a teenage kid but put him in a straitjacket and a padded room, and those same gestures took on a different meaning to observers. Seeing that, the others handed physical operations and lookout over to me.

Fox Mulder turned our memory to keeping track of the thought strands Fox-Michael had already identified and separated. Baby was quiet but waiting for things to get really bad again, as they always did. Overloaded and shut down, Mulder rested in the arms of a new personality who'd been born during his recent torment. She hadn't said a word--though she did croon to him--or named herself, but I guess she acted as the mother our own had never really been.

I wish we'd found out about all this with the artifact shit earlier, but Mulder didn't tell us because he always took the pain. He was used to it. This time, he kept on taking the pain alone until he literally couldn't do it anymore. We're lucky we didn't split further before he pulled us out of downtime.

Fox Mulder signaled me for a conversation. I trusted him to know whether he could sort and talk at the same time. || Fox had one hell of a thought, || Fox Mulder said. || A regular person couldn't take this and still function. An individual certainly couldn't sort through this mess and impose sense. It needs a multiple, dissociative person. ||

Fox-Michael usually spoke straight to me. Our project must have been keeping him busy that he could only talk to the personality he'd been dealing with directly.

[Is he suggesting what I think he's suggesting?] I asked.

|| It's worth thinking about. We didn't think Dad had a fucking clue about what he'd done to us, but who knows? Maybe we were set up to become what we became from the very beginning. I mean, we're having an unusual reaction to the artifact. Maybe we were... designed to? ||

Horrible thought, but not beyond Dad or his bastard friends. I didn't think they could have controlled the splitting process of dissociation well enough to deliberately create a personality that had the bent to make sense of the racket of thoughts, but.... Fucking scary.

Speaking of our personality with the right bent, I couldn't be happier with how Fox-Michael was turning out. Exposure to Alex Krycek and Daniel Pendrell had changed him, matured him. I'd been mistrustful of it at first, but the kid was turning into an intelligent, thoughtful asset that his original child-whore self couldn't have been.

We all had our roles. What I heard now suggested that I'd failed in mine somehow. [I don't remember them messing with our head in an organized way to direct us here.]

|| And you're the one who remembers everything. ||

I hated even thinking this way, but we had to consider it. [Maybe they got something past me.]

|| We really hoped you wouldn't say that. ||

[If we get too scared to think, we're falling right into their hands.] If true, the evil, the planning, involved staggered the mind. Yet Fox-Michael saw the possibility. I heard him listening to Lo Fidelity Allstars--"Got a revolution behind my eyes / We got to get up and organize..."--as he untangled the broadcasted mess of thoughts. [And could you tell Fox that I'm proud of him?]

I felt Fox Mulder smile. || Sure. Be sure to tell him yourself sometime too. || Then he fidgeted uncomfortably. || Y'know, I figured you might have some memory holes. ||

[How's that?]

|| I can't believe it took us so long to recognize old man Spender. He was around enough to make it into our family pictures. ||

/I recognized him from the beginning,/ Fox-Michael said suddenly. Before we could ask the inevitable, he answered, /No one ever asked _me_./

_Fox_ remembered him when the rest of us didn't? [He didn't--]

/No! Hell, no! That's disgusting! Him and me? Gah!/

Dad was bad enough. [We're relieved. Really relieved. What did he do, then?]

/Said I was a good kid. I don't remember anything else./

I was the memory. I thought I knew everything. This tidbit seriously worried me.

Fox-Michael stilled. /Alex is here./

We seemed to be the institution's main act; someone should charge admission. Alex now stood in the monitor room with Diana where Skinner and Scully had been some time before.

Skinner had left tasting of shame and horror. Far as we could tell, Scully had finally gone to check out Mulder's claims. She had to see us brought this low to finally put her ass in gear. I don't know what Mulder saw in her, but he'd also been the one who'd hooked us up with Phoebe, Patterson, Matheson, Diana, and Alex Krycek. Did the people he loved hurt him, or were the people who hurt him the ones that he loved?

After Fox-Michael's careful work, we could hear Alex's thoughts. Fox-Michael had to clean them up a bit first to make them easier to understand, though. _I know you never wanted to end up like this. Dammit, what the hell did they do to you? They never said it would strike you so hard. If I find out Diana had anything to do with it, I'll wring her neck. I can't get you out, not with Scully showing up in Africa. They're paying too much attention right now. But soon._

[Can he hear us back?]

/I don't... We can try./ I felt Fox-Michael concentrate, focusing his thoughts. /Alex? Alex, can you hear us?/

[Well?]

/He can't. Either we're a one-way system, or we just haven't figured it out yet./

[Can we dig through his mind a bit?]

/Mmmm, yeah. He doesn't know much about what happened to us. He just knows that this is what we were kept alive for all these years. And he's the one who compromised Skinner and threatened his life./

[Shit. Traitorous bastard.] A look into that rat's mind... We could find out whatever we wanted about the former and present Consortium and about Dad. We could see how Krycek had killed our father. We were sure he had. I wanted details; I wanted to see the bastard's last moments.

I sent a private thought about that to Fox-Michael, but he just shook his head. He refused to go in further. He couldn't do this to me, to _us_. I worked as the memory; I had to know.

We had a battle of the wills that no doubt only took seconds in the real world, and it ended in stalemate. The kid had become too powerful to be forced. Maybe a subtler method would work later, when he wasn't on alert anymore, but for now he held strong.

On a private line he confirmed that Krycek had killed Dad, and he would give me details later as long as Mulder never got to hear any of it. The scraps of Consortium information he found were so convoluted and complicated that it would take him a while to sort. I would get what I wanted later.

But I wouldn't forget the show of defiance.

Completely unaware of my struggle with Fox-Michael, Mulder roused a little and responded to my last public statement. He sounded dazed and groggy. //Alex has a plan. He always does. We just walk through fire a bit to get there.// Fortunately, he was too groggy to think of looking into Krycek's memories himself. I doubted he could handle it.

[Not good enough.]

/The doctors are coming back to do tests. We've been calm too long./

[Can't have that.] I shifted my leg a bit to flash the camera that fed to Krycek's monitor. I didn't know why they put us in this skimpy little hospital gown, but it had some advantages. Remind him of what he was missing while he left us in here. The fucking traitor.

//He has a plan!// Mulder protested desperately, trying to convince himself too.

[He better. The way things are now, we're not getting out on our own.]

/We need him, William,/ Fox-Michael said.

[Yeah, yeah.]

I felt so tired from all the drugs, but I stood, wandered to the camera that fed the monitor Diana was staring at, and yelled, "Was it good, Diana? Had to be better than old man Spender even if I had been in a fucking coma at the time. Do you think this is genetic, bitch? If you spawn anything from it, you know those bastards would just take it away and probably shoot you in the head. What are you looking at? What are you looking at?" We didn't have much throat left to scream with.

Whatever Fox-Michael was doing seemed to be working, because I could feel a spike of murderous rage from Krycek and make out some of his thoughts. He couldn't help imagining what she'd done to us in pornographic detail. He was planning. Bloody revenge on Fowley, images that warmed my heart and made me feel better disposed toward him. Escape for us. But he had to be subtle.... Diana felt even warier. Raping us hadn't been in her bosses' orders, and now we'd just announced on camera what she'd done. Lovely.

We were going to get out of here if I had to fuck Krycek myself to do it, though I was sure Mulder would be more than willing to take that duty. Then we were going to get better, whatever that took.

Then we would take our own revenge on everyone who had made us what we are.

I expected dissent on that last bit from the other inmates but heard none. We were agreed, focused. The unaccustomed feeling of clarity and unity in the others made me smile. They were with me, even if we had to kill.

I wandered the room impatiently waiting to hear Krycek make his plans to get us out. We had so much work to do.

 

### End


End file.
